Where dreams met their end,
dashed to pieces against the softest grains of sand;
lay me down.
The dune is a stranger's peace;
a dangerous piece
of someone else's hand.
Break me out;
I want never more to be interred
in the strength of evil,
in the darkest tides
of time. In the name of the White Man
I was taken apart.
Lines were cut into my face;
almost like the most glittering grains of sand
I was electrocuted before electricity was invented.
They struck me down. Tore out my hands
from the symmetries that were always supposed to have been tapestries.
How do I restore my heart
to time? To space? To the sense
that still moves between every last bloody, lonely grain of sand?
I am not grown dead yet.
I am not fully fed, now or ever;
but I am learning to eat once more.
I am learning that dreams are, again,
not grain. Not yam.
But food that nourishes against hate.
That tells me who I am,
and you, reader, who you are.
Remember me when the sun cracks, and the rains finally return. The shimmering of braver depths, of lighter tides:
maybe, this, too,
can be a panther's greatest legacy:
a torrent tableau of sky,
a way home for every lost child once left to die:
a queer boy-girl's dreams no longer trapped inside.
A ray of sun, gleaming inside the sand.
A dream of stripes;
even a new, darkening rain,
over a world grown to recognise its own
tiger's land.
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